Computer spreadsheet applications allow users to manage and visualize large amounts of data. Typically, these applications allow users to visualize the data using charts. A user creates a chart by manually selecting a portion of the spreadsheet data, usually using a cursor or a mouse, and interacting with a series of user dialogs to create and visually format a chart of the data. The manually generated chart is then overlaid on top of the spreadsheet data. However, this computer system functionality is inefficient since each chart is generated and adjusted manually.